I am happy to announce the release of the official version of my transcription of the "Exercises contained in Adler's Practical Grammar". It comprises all 172 sets of Exercises contained in George J. Adler's Practical Grammar of the Latin Language (1858), both the English sentences from the textbook and the Latin translations from the Key prepared by the author himself. Missing translations have been added by me, and some errors have been corrected as well.

I cannot promise that this edition is perfect, but I think that I can say that I at least can no longer improve it without further help. There is only so much a single person can do. Or to put it differently:

Tai T'ung wrote:
Were I to await perfection,
my book would never be finished.

I uploaded the plain text input file and an HTML-version to the Download-section of my web-site (both bundled in a zip-file, size about 417 kb). Should anyone require a different version, e.g. a spread sheet version, it should be easy to create one using the input file.

Just a question on Adler's (Ollendorff's) method in general: Why does every exercise take a question and answer format, and why are there only translation exercises from English to Latin and no Latin to English?

Nesrad wrote:Just a question on Adler's (Ollendorff's) method in general: Why does every exercise take a question and answer format, and why are there only translation exercises from English to Latin and no Latin to English?

Others are certainly more qualified than I to answer your question, perhaps someone involved in actually teaching languages. Ollendorff's method was an application of the oral method of language teacher Jean Manesca, and a defective one, according to Evan Millner in a brief article on his Latinum web-site. As far as I can tell from various information on the web, Ollendorff's (and with it Adler's) approach represents the communicative approach to language learning (although it concentrates on translating), contrary to the grammatical/analytical approach which seems to have reigned supreme before that.

My decision in transcribing these exercises was not based on the method used to teach/learn Latin, but rather on the specific area these covered. As far as I can tell there are three major areas in any language:

Narrative: either high-level ("he led the army across the bridge") or low-level ("...who drew out the knife with which he used to scrape shoes, and plunged it up to the hilt in his companion's breast").

Communication: this covers mainly questions, and to a certain degree answers, although the latter often have a pretty large narrative (or abstract) character.

Abstract: talking about abstract ideas.

For me, the main importance of Adler's exercises lies in its concentration on this second area, the first one being mainly represented by prose composition guides (although mostly keeping to high-level prose). Any attempt at learning to speak (or think) in Latin is bound to fail if you have not the models for the most basic aspect of communication: asking questions. In my opinion, books like Traupman's "Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency" are useless without the engine provided by Adler's exercises.

Personally, I am not a big fan of natural learning (I belong to the "analytic" tribe), but Adler's exercises are useful irrespective of what approach to language learning you favour: if you want to be able to ask questions and answer them, then Adler's exercises will provide the basic tool set. Once having acquired it, Traupman's book may give one the material to talk about the world, but first you need the basic tools.

I want to emphasize that I am not very good at Latin, neither reading, writing, or speaking (too much transcribing instead of learning and reading, I guess), but I believe that I was able to identify some very important resources for learning Latin:

Vocabulary: Ripman' Classfied Vocabulary

Phraseology: Meissner's Latin Phrase-Book

Communication: Adler's Exercises

I found them important enough to spend many an hour transcribing (and proofreading) them.
What is sorely missing, is a book dealing with low-level narrative Latin. A bit of that is interspersed across the entire textbook by Mr. Adler, but a book concentrating on that aspect would be handy. I have not found anything like that, so far. Which was a major reason why I transcribed two Latin novels which do a very good job at showing that low-level Latin is possible.

I hope that this answers - at least in part - your question, especially the first one. The second question - the lack of translation exercises from Latin into English - should be obvious now. Those exercises are more representative of the analytical approach, and that was not what Ollendorff's (and Adler's) method was about.

In my experience, no pedagogical tool such as word lists and phrase books can replace reading lots of idiomatic Latin, because this is the closest thing we have to Latin immersion. The classical corpus has a good deal of what you call low-level narrative, for example Cicero's letters which are a gold mine for every day language.But I wouldn't be too picky about what one should read, as long as he reads lots and lots of reasonably good Latin. In this respect Avellanus can be helpful.

I think the major defect in the way Latin is taught today is the way classical texts are picked apart instead of read. Students become proficient at thumbing through dictionaries and commentaries in order to produce stilted translations of short excerpts, but they don't know how to pick up a book and read through it. Personally, a turning point for me was when I became captivated with Livy's narrative of the second Punic War and read through several books like a novel, and again when I became infatuated with Stoicism while reading through Seneca's letters and dialogues, and when I couldn't put down the Tusculan Disputations, possibly the best book I've ever read.

I like the old Seindenstucker/Ahn/Ollendorff/Ploetz approach because its goal is not to decode texts, but to actually learn the language, much like today's Orberg method. But whatever the method, be it Wheelock or Orberg, the key to becoming proficient is immersion in the authors. To paraphrase Seneca, let them become our best friends.

PS. I think I’d better qualify this endorsement. I’m a strong believer in “picking texts apart” too—and in using dictionaries and commentaries and anything else that aids accurate and precise understanding. Fast reading is good, close reading is good.

And I should apologize to Carolus Raeticus for distracting (not detracting) from the success of his enterprise.

And I should apologize to Carolus Raeticus for distracting (not detracting) from the success of his enterprise.

That's not necessary, I am fairly tough. Anyway, I agree with reading being extremely important. Multum legere and multa legere, both are necessary. However, I am rather at odds with torturing students with texts that are way beyond their current level. Yes, one does learn well from texts that require one to exert one's brain. But you can overdo things. And multum legere will not help much when trying to make these things stick in your mind (let alone for comprehension to become automatic). Therefore I subscribe to the comprehensible input-idea (Stephen Krashen explains it quite well in this 3-minute video on YouTube).

The value (and purpose) of my transcriptions is making more tools and building blocks really available, that is for full text-search, randomization, customization, etc. They are tools only. You still have to do the actual work yourself, but more and better tools may help along the way. Adding these tools is my contribution to the Latin community, and a lasting one hopefully (unless we are heading for a digital Dark Age), so that for the next generation of students of Latin the availability of these texts/tools is something natural. I am profiting from other people's contribution constantly, so giving a bit back is the right thing to do.

I totally agree that texts should be at the appropriate level. Having students read texts that are too difficult is part of the "picking apart" approach that makes them decode instead of read. In this respect you have rendered a great service to students with your transcriptions of Avellanus.

May I also mention that I appreciate your work with Adler's exercises. I'm actually considering ways they could be put to good use. What are the terms of use of your work?

there are no terms of use. Adler's texts are in the public domain. I would appreciate it if whoever uses these transcriptions would note that the transcription has been made by Carolus Raeticus. Other than that, feel free to use it for whatever purpose in whatever manner. That is one reason why I uploaded the input files. In my opinion, that is where the magic lies. The rest of the files are only demo versions. The same is true for my Unleashed-versions. Should anyone want to create a smartphone app based on these input files. Go on with it.

Salvete -- I'm curious whether any of the users on this site have worked systematically through Adler and if so, what do you feel has been the outcome? I have felt the need to gain a more active command of the language to improve my reading ability, but have been somewhat daunted by the sheer size of Adler and wonder whether the effort expended to go through it might be better applied elsewhere. What do you think?

I have not worked through Adler's textbook, never intended to and (probably) never will. Still, I will give you my opinion because I am faced with pretty much the same problem. I want more active command of the Latin language, and mostly so in order to improve my reading skills.

Quick answer: Adler will not help all that much. The reason for this is the fact that his Practical Grammar of the Latin Language concentrates on the information-sharing side (Questions and Answers) which, of course, makes it quite unique. So unique in fact that I decided to transcribe the Exercises (and the Key). These are worth having/using whether or not one works through Adler's textbook or not.

Since most Latin texts do not concentrate on this oral aspect, an introduction to Latin prose composition is probably more helpful. But that is a topic of its own and deserves its own post. I will create a new thread for that.

I have created an updated version (v1.1) of my transcription of Adler's Exercises contained in his Practical Grammar. Most changes were typos (mine), but I also made a few changes and added respective footnotes.